Robert De Niro learned how to play a sheriff with advice from this Muscogee County deputy
When movie star Robert De Niro wanted to know how to hold his gun, while playing a Georgia sheriff, he asked Joe McCrea.
And when Robert De Niro wanted to know how to say his lines, as a Georgia sheriff, he listened to Joe McCrea say them.
And when Joe McCrea’s three days of acting as a law enforcement consultant on the movie set of “Wash Me In The River” were over, Robert De Niro asked him to stay on, for 12 more days.
It was a heady gig for McCrea, 63, a 34-year veteran of the Muscogee County Sheriff’s Office, and it got him into the movie, eventually.
In his role as a consultant, McCrea told director Randall Emmett and his crew how sheriffs and their deputies act, in their official capacity: How do they secure crime scenes? How do they search a building? Where do they put the crime scene tape when they find a body?
McCrea’s part in this production began last October, when Emmett called the sheriff’s office.
Emmett had called another law enforcement agency, but no one called him back. So he called the sheriff’s office, where worker Carol Foster heard what he wanted, and cast it to McCrea.
Soon Emmett and five associates were visiting McCrea in Columbus.
“We met for a couple of hours one day, and we went over the script, talked about different ideas and language, and whether it fit a Southern theme,” McCrea recalled. “At the conclusion of the meeting, he offered to sign me to a consulting contract, from a law enforcement perspective.”
McCrea would be the fact-checker on the set.
“The thing about Randall, the director, he was very adamant about realism,” McCrea said. “He wanted things to be very realistic, so he just wanted me there to say, ‘Yeah, that makes sense. That’s how we would do things.’”
One day the crew was shooting outside an apartment where officers had found a body, in the film’s fictional “Huxton County,” and McCrea noticed no one was guarding the door, though it was supposed to be a secured crime scene. He pointed that out.
So they told him to go guard the door, while wearing one of the tan and brown deputy uniforms from wardrobe, and he got on camera.
He got no lines, but expects to be an extra in that and a few other crucial spots.
The plot
Besides De Niro, the movie stars John Malkovich, Willa Fitzgerald, Jack Huston and Quavo, among others.
It’s about a woman addicted to heroin who tries to clean up, intending to get baptized (thus the title), but she dies from an overdose.
This triggers her vengeful boyfriend, who unleashes his fury upon her suppliers, with the sheriff caught in the conflict.
The film’s expected to be released in 2022, McCrea said. Emmett has a earlier film, “Midnight In The Switchgrass,” coming out first.
McCrea was on the set in January as the crew shot scenes in Puerto Rico, their production schedule thrown off by the COVID-19 pandemic. Portions of the movie also were filmed in Waycross, Georgia, but McCrea wasn’t needed there.
In their downtime, he and the crew enjoyed luxurious accommodations in the town of Dorado west of San Juan, sometimes staying up late drinking Medalla beer and talking.
McCrea was up late with a production assistant one night when he mentioned he might be cut, in the final edit.
“I said, ‘I don’t mind if I end up on the cutting floor, just having the experience to have done it,” he recalled.
He said the assistant replied: “You don’t really get it, do you? You’re in like three major scenes, and you’re right smack in the middle of them, so I don’t really see any way that you would ever be cut out of this.”
Reading Bob’s lines
Production for the movie was supposed to start in November, but the pandemic postponed plans to January.
McCrea in the meantime read the script, recording himself saying De Niro’s lines, so De Niro could hear the intonation, not to feign a Southern dialect, but to sound close enough.
One day on the set, right before a scene, McCrea saw the actor sitting quietly in a folding chair, his earbuds in place. He told McCrea he was listening to his recordings for an upcoming scene.
McCrea flew to Puerto Rico on Jan. 6, still in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, when much of the island was shut down.
He got some beer on the taxi ride in, but the restaurants were closed, and his hotel was about a mile from any other business.
The following Sunday, the cast and crew had a big dinner, and that’s where he met Bob, as De Niro’s friends know him.
“The next day I went to a meeting with Bob and Meadow Williams, who was playing his lieutenant in the movie, and Randall, and we did a script read,” he remembered.
Then they went to a scene at an apartment, to see how it was set up. That’s where Emmett turned to a producer and said, “Hey, let’s put him in the movie.”
“I thought they were nuts,” McCrea said. But he went to wardrobe and got fitted, and for the next three days played an extra.
“It was really funny, because I remember being in a scene and them filming, but nobody ever told me what to do,” he said. “Then I realized that what I’m doing is what I’d normally do in real life, so I guess nobody felt the need to tell me any different.”
On the set
Most of the time, when the cameras got rolling, McCrea stayed out of the way, unless someone yelled “Joe!”
Then he’d be called over for a reality check.
At the dead body scene, the crew asked: Where would the crime tape be?
Looking over the riverside setting, McCrea had to tell them the crime tape would be way up on the high ground, yards from the body.
But it wouldn’t be in the shot, that far away, so he helped cut the distance.
For his interview last week with the Ledger-Enquirer, McCrea was allowed to share some personal photos of him with De Niro and others, but no image that showed a movie scene. He also was not to divulge any plot twists.
“Let’s just say that it has a surprising ending,” he said.
The film already has generated some Hollywood buzz, as critics anticipate its release along with Emmett’s other movie that’s to debut first.
McCrea got back to town Jan. 21. He’s back in his Government Center office, handling grants and other supplemental funding for the sheriff’s office, and enduring some movie jokes.
The gig got him more than a junket to Puerto Rico, to hang out in a beachfront hotel with movie stars for a few weeks: He got paid, too.
But he wouldn’t say how much.
“It was very generous,” he said.
He also got two movie credits, as an extra and as a consultant.
Should he be cut, in the final edit, his name still will be there, twice, at the end.
This story was originally published May 12, 2021 at 6:00 AM.